In my humble opinion this seems to be the case. When I look at recent developments in the war on terror and the fact that they have not been very successful in conducting terror attacks since 9/11 there seems to be no other answer. There have been some small terror operations but these operations have been ineffective for the most part. When they were effective other Arab people were the usual victims. They are normally scattered isolated operations which have some kind of a sentimental meaning but are otherwise insignificant.
I have to give the credit for whatever techniques that the US is using to gather intelligence for their military operations. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that our special operations troops and the CIA have conducted successful anti terror operations that we will never ever hear about. I am sure that al-Qaeda has been thwarted time and time again before they could get operations started. I will give you the two biggest reasons why I believe that al-Qaeda is incapable of a comeback. The first one is that no one formally trained by al-Qaeda has successfully launched a terror attack in the United States since the toppling of the world trade center. There have been instances of attacks by American citizens which have had a degree of success but these attacks were not planned by al-Qaeda although the individuals who conducted them did them for the benefit of that terror organization. I believe that both instances could have been avoided if the superiors of the perpetrators had been more in touch with the situation. There have also been attempts which were bungled but could have possibly been successful. The major point though is that al-Qaeda as an entity has not been able to attack the US on American soil.
Have you ever heard the saying that the best defense is a good offense? This is essentially what the US has done to al-Qaeda in the war on terror. This tactic has cost tremendously in terms of stress on our armed forces and money but it has been successful. We have reached the point now where the tactics and equipment which we have developed in order to fight this war are good enough to maintain excruciating pressure on al-Qaeda without the use of large numbers of ground troops.
Drones and whatever else that we are using to gather information have been responsible for the destruction of many high value al-Qaeda targets to include the death of Osama bin Laden. This is apparent in the fact that the US is beginning to return control of Afghanistan to Afghan forces. We have scored significant victories which have to be extremely demoralizing to al-Qaeda. The first is that we have taken control of the city in Afghanistan which is the birth place of the Taliban. The fact that they can't mount a significant retaliation has to be demoralizing to al-Qaeda. We also have ejected them (for the most part) from Iraq and Afghanistan. We were also able to go into Afghanistan and kill their leader which had to be as devastating as anything else.
Some indications that al-Qaeda is about to lose it's grip are the fact that they are kidnapping children to use as suicide bombers and lying to them in order to get them to go through with it. In the beginning of this war there seemed to be no lack of willing persons who would strap on a bomb and blow themselves up. There is no shortage of al-Qaeda members and recruits, so why is it so hard for them to recruit suicide bombers these days? Another sign is that they have been all but ejected from Afghanistan. They seem to be relocating to Yemen because there are large areas of that country over which the Yemeni government has little or no control.
The US has managed to keep al-Qaeda on its heels for the duration of the war. If they can keep them backing up they will never be able to mount another successful offensive. This war is now manageable because we are able to do so. Constant pressure will cause them to crumble and I do believe thats exactly what we are seeing.
If anyone has the impression that we can successfully wipe out al-Qaeda I would like to wake them up and help them to smell the coffee. Our objectives had to be changed of necessity to the more realistic goals of containing them and controlling their actions. Now that we have accomplished that to a certain degree our focus needs to be on protecting our own borders.
Military Ring Express
